


waiting for you

by bethchildz



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 17:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethchildz/pseuds/bethchildz
Summary: Jane and Maura’s alternate perspectives on coming to terms with their feelings for one another. Post-canon oneshot.





	1. Jane

**Author's Note:**

> I found Rizzoli and Isles on the TV the other week, completely out of the blue, and I was thrown back to how much I adored these two and so here I am writing Rizzles fanfiction in the year 2019. 
> 
> The whole fic, especially Maura’s chapter, is kind of inspired by Waiting for You by The Aces so I recommend listening to it :)
> 
> (As a sidenote I haven’t fully watched this show since 2016 so most of this is based off memory but I hope it’s enjoyable anyway and I loved writing it!)

_“I can't keep you there, you’re everywhere, forever glowing, _ _It’s a trick of the eye, it passes me by, Keeps on going, I want it all, but I can't have it.” _

– Woo, Beach House

* * *

She sits opposite you at the dinner table, her glass of red wine in one hand, her head thrown back in delirious laughter at something your mother is saying but you miss what it is that’s so funny because the world has slowed down. You’re aware, on some level, that it’s a Sunday evening like any other and your whole family are here, gathered around the table for a typical Rizzoli dinner. You can see them out of the corner of your eye, reminding you of this fact, but they’re blurred slightly, as though they’re fading into the background because she’s laughing, and her hair is impossibly golden under the bright lights of her dining room, and all of a sudden she’s making eye contact with you over the table. Her laughter falters just slightly, the remnants of her smile still tugging at the corners of her lips, but her eyes soften as she looks at you, and something unspoken is communicated between you, something you feel you should understand but you don’t. It’s not her “are you okay?” look, you would know that one anywhere. Is it something your mother said? No, it’s not a knowing smirk, not an inside joke you share. She holds your gaze too long for that, as though she can’t look away, as though she’s caught you in the middle of something. And perhaps she has. You know your eyes are almost glassy, as if something has happened at this dinner table that justifies such a visceral reaction, as though something is screaming at you but you still can’t hear what it’s saying.

It isn’t the first time you’ve felt this way.

It’s no revelation that Maura is beautiful, that she almost demands all eyes of the room to turn in her direction. You’ve told her many times, just as she has complimented you. You’ve watched her at crime scenes, gracefully striding in her impossibly high heels, possessing a kind of confidence and poise that has consistently taken your breath away. You’ve seen her tired and drained, curled into her couch at night when no eyes but yours are allowed to watch her, and she is just as beautiful then as ever, her makeupless face still glowing, still ethereal. More recently, you’ve seen her stand on a balcony, the Parisian streets at sunset a seemingly perfect backdrop to her impossible beauty. In fact, you often find yourself staring at her when she isn’t looking, as though you can’t believe she’s real, as though after all these years you still can’t believe she’s your best friend. You catch her looking too, more than once, and she always blushes slightly, turns her head away, and you wonder in those moments what’s going through her mind. It has almost become customary in your friendship, to steal these looks every now and then, to simply observe each other, enjoy one another’s company. That’s not strange, is it?

But something about tonight feels different.

She’s on her third glass of wine; you can tell because her cheeks are tinged slightly red, the creases of her eyes slightly more defined, and there’s a slight twinkle in them as she’s looking at you. You can feel the beer in your bloodstream too, pleasantly warm. You aren’t drunk, not even really tipsy, so you can’t blame this feeling on alcohol, but there’s something about that warmth, something about the way your stomach feels like it might flip upside down that reminds you of being drunk, and you almost question if it’s really only your second bottle. When she looks away, turns back to Frankie and Nina who are discussing something about work that you can’t even bring yourself to focus in on, you feel the loss of her eye contact like a physical weight. You can hear something on the periphery of your senses, one word repeated, but you can’t get at it at first, until all of a sudden it’s like you’re sucked backwards out of this daze you’ve lost yourself in and Tommy’s voice is quiet but concerned beside you saying, “Jane? Janie are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Bit much to drink, I think. Be right back,” you say and you hope he doesn’t notice there’s only one empty bottle behind you. You make your exit swiftly but as casually as you can, locking the bathroom door behind you and taking a deep breath out. Maura would always say that if you’re feeling off you should bring your awareness to the sensations in your body, as it never lies to you, so you try it. Your hands are trembling, just slightly, the way they would if you just witnessed a car crash, or if you’d been on an especially scary rollercoaster. Adrenaline. You know that one. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears, a sort of high-pitched ringing, and your stomach is flipping now, over and over, as though you might be sick. Is this what a panic attack feels like? But the strangest part, you notice, is that underneath the emotion you have identified as panic, is a pleasant kind of tingling in your limbs, like the butterflies you get in your stomach when you’re on a first date.

“I’m losing it, I’m officially losing it,” you whisper to yourself, taking a short look at yourself in the mirror. Your cheeks are flushed too, so you splash your face with cold water before willing yourself to calm down. Taking a few deep inhales, you open the door and join the rest of your family who have moved the party to the living room, the sports channel put on mute while a song you don’t recognise plays in the background. Your heart warms at the sight of Frankie and Nina laughing and dancing together, and you remind yourself that moving back to Boston from Virginia was the best decision you could have possibly made. This thought almost screams at you, even louder, when you enter the kitchen and Maura turns to you, this time a concerned look on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and she reaches for your arm. The touch burns your skin, and you almost flinch. That feeling in your stomach returns, flipping and flipping. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry,” you say like it’s nothing, but you can tell she notices the slight shakiness of your voice because her eyebrow raises just slightly, as if to say, _I don’t believe you_. You smile anyway, trying to reassure her with your eyes, and there it is again, a look passed between you, one that makes your heart beat faster and if you weren’t so damn cowardly, you’d ask her what it means. Is she as confused as you are? But you don't say anything because she’s passing you another beer and Frankie is calling your name to come and join them, and if you’re being truly honest, because you’re scared of the answer.

The rest of the night passes by slowly because, really, right now you don’t want to talk to your family. As much as you love them, as much as you’re relieved to be back among the chaos, Maura keeps looking at you over the top of her wine glass and the sleeves of her navy sweater are rolled up, revealing her forearms, and you can’t stop staring at the skin exposed there. You can’t concentrate on what Tommy has to say, and you can’t fully commit to laughing at Frankie’s jokes because even when she’s behind you, you can feel Maura’s presence in the room burning a hole into your back. _You want to be alone with her_. As much as your heart races, as much as you feel as though the world might end tonight when there’s nothing and nobody to buffer whatever is happening between you two this evening, you keep willing for the door to close, for the party to end. The best part of these nights is often when everyone has left, when the music is turned down a notch, and she sits opposite you on the couch and you finish a bottle of wine together, alone, with your legs touching just so. 

When the door finally does close, Maura is the one to shut it, and you are almost trembling again with a sort of anticipation you can’t quite put your finger on. She joins you on the couch with a bright smile that’s utterly contagious, and you realise this is exactly what you came home for. You would miss your family in Virginia, sure, but you’d live, and you’d miss BPD but you’d get over it eventually; you think you could even really learn to love the teaching as an FBI instructor. But Maura. What would you do without her? And so you came back, you packed your bags for the second time, you shoved your pride aside and admitted you made the wrong decision, let the people around you ask a million questions because when you told her the news, she cried. And it was in that moment that you realised how much you had hurt her, how much she missed you too, and you never wanted to hurt her like that ever again, so you promised yourself, every single day you would wake up and endeavour to make her smile. 

And here she is, smiling at you. This is home, you think. Home is in her smile, it’s in her wine glass and the creases of her eyes, it’s in the curls of her blonde hair and the warmth that’s spreading yet again like fire through your belly.

“I’ve missed you,” you say, and she looks at you like you’re her whole world. 

“I’ve missed you too,” she says, and you think you can see tears begin to well in her eyes and your heart lurches to the floor.

“Don’t cry,” you say, and you can’t help but reach out, tucking a stray blonde curl behind her ear.

“What was wrong earlier?” she asks with such sincerity and concern that you can’t help but smile. She knows you like nobody else, of course she recognised something was up, of course she didn’t believe you. But how can you explain how you feel when you don’t even know yourself what it is you’re feeling? So you tell the truth.

“I don’t know.” You’re looking at your hands, nervously flattening the scarred skin there.

“Are your hands bothering you?”

“No, no they’re fine.”

There’s a small stretch of silence as you both figure out how to approach the strange tension that seems to fill the air around you. Your heart is racing again, and you want to tell it to stop because you don’t know what it’s trying to say, but you know it’s trying to say _something_, and you think that’s worse than not knowing at all.

“Jane…” she trails off, but you look up at her as she puts her wine glass down on the coffee table in front of you. Her jaw is tight, as though she is anxious, as though she wants to say something but is afraid what you might think.

“Tell me, Maura,” you almost plead.

“Tell you what?” she replies, and you’re not sure if she’s genuinely confused or if she’s waiting for you to say it, needs to hear it from you first.

“What’s happening,” you start, feeling your mouth go dry, “between us.” The last two words are almost a whisper and you’re not sure she even hears. But you hear how it sounds and you almost cringe. She doesn’t answer and you risk looking up at her again, finding her eyes softer than before; she’s looking at you almost tenderly. But there’s something else too, and you feel it pool in your lower abdomen, a sense of want, a sense of desire. For what?

You see it coming at the last second as she leans in. At first you think you must have something on your face, or perhaps she’s going to whisper something in your ear, but why would she when you’re the only two in the room? All you know is your heart is throbbing and your hands are sweating and you want to cry but you don’t know why and then her lips are on yours. Her lips are on yours. She’s kissing you. They’re soft, impossibly soft, and you think they match her so well; they feel so incredibly Maura. It takes a second or two before your instinct kicks in and you kiss her back, your eyes shut tight and your hand on her thigh. And this is it, isn’t it? How could you have been so stupid? The butterflies, the shaky hands, the warmth that seemed to spread throughout your limbs and down your spine, the way you kept looking at her as though if you looked away she would vanish and prove she was only a figment of your imagination. It was all leading to this moment here, with her lips on yours, melding together as though it was the most natural thing in the world. 

She is the one to pull back first, catching her breath and it reminds you to take a breath too, returning to your body which at once feels nonexistent and entirely too present. You sit there, looking at each other, breathing heavily, before you lean back in, this time with a passion you didn’t think you possessed, and you feel her reverberate with the shock of it. And here you are, sitting on the couch, kissing your best friend. Kissing the woman you haven’t stopped thinking about for almost 10 years. And you feel so full, and you feel like suddenly everything makes sense: the songs make sense, and the ache you have felt your entire life makes sense, and yet, shouldn’t this be odd? Shouldn’t it feel wrong? But it doesn’t. It feels like love. It feels like home. And it feels like finally finding the last piece to the puzzle. _You love her._ You love her and you want to keep kissing her, and you want to make love to her, whatever it is that means, and now, as she looks at you with swollen lips and dilated pupils, you think to yourself, how could you not see it? How could you go so long living in the shade?


	2. Maura

_ “I think you know what I want,  _ _ I think you know, I'm waiting for you.  _ _ I'll take your hand and kiss your fingers,  _ _ So you don't have to break the ice.” _

– Waiting For You, The Aces 

* * *

You can’t deny that from the beginning you were drawn to her, that during those first weeks of working together you felt the small inklings of attraction nibbling away at your insides. But she looked at you, and she really  _ saw _ you, like nobody else; she actually gave you the time of day. She didn’t run away at the first signs of your oddities, she listened even when you knew she didn’t really understand, and somewhere along the line you became so close it didn’t seem right to think of her in that way anymore. You forgot the way she made you feel giddy inside, like a schoolgirl with a crush, like the way the women you dated in college made you blush, because she was your co-worker, your  _ friend,  _ your _ best friend.  _ And so you swallowed it, and you dug it deep within you until you didn’t even have to lie, you didn’t have to break out into hives because it didn’t  _ feel _ like a lie. 

Until it did. 

You’re not sure if there was an exact moment you realised you were in love with your best friend. Maybe it was the moment she told you Casey had proposed and you felt the entire world fall beneath your feet, as though the floor had simply disappeared. Or perhaps it was when you watched her jump from a bridge after a stranger right before you could catch her, and you thought you’d lost her to the sea, thought you'd never get a chance to tell her just how much she really meant to you. But somehow one day you awoke to the lights being switched on and you couldn’t see anything else, and all that swirled around and around in your brain was a series of voices yelling  _ ‘You’re in love with Jane Rizzoli.’  _ And it was fine, really, keeping it to yourself, because the alternative was not an option. You couldn’t lose her by frightening her away with your feelings. You knew she couldn’t reciprocate, knew it was implausible. But then she told you she was moving away, and any semblance of a future you had envisioned, or allowed yourself to imagine between the safety of your linen sheets at night, was stripped away before your eyes. You would stay friends, she said, you would call and visit and it would be fine,  _ it would be the same,  _ but you knew that wasn’t true. And you couldn’t tell her why your heart was breaking more than during any breakup, or why you cried yourself to sleep every night after that because she wasn’t going to be by your side every day, she wasn’t going to flash that smile or roll her eyes and stamp her foot when she was frustrated. And so you hid that too, pretended you would get through it like you pretended you didn’t imagine the way her lips would taste every time she got slightly too close. 

It was in Paris when things changed. 

You had shared beds before, more than once, but suddenly she was beside you every night, her black hair was in your sheets—you found them on your pillow in the mornings—and her legs grazed yours when she was asleep. One night you awoke with her arm wrapped around your waist and you hated her for it, just a little, because she didn’t know what she was doing; she didn’t know your heart leapt every time her touch lingered just a little too long. But you were on the balcony watching the sunset when you felt her presence behind you, and when you turned, you saw the look on her face and your knees almost buckled because you knew that face, you saw it every day in the mirror, you felt it when she made an especially funny joke or when she bought you your favourite perfume. 

“You’re beautiful,” she said, and you tried to take the compliment, tried to look away and thank her without the blush creeping up your neck but you knew you failed miserably because a smile spread across her face and it was teasing, flirtatious. You wanted to tell her this wasn’t how friends acted. Was it? You hadn’t had many friends, not close ones, not ones you felt you could really trust. Maybe this was all in your head. But you kept catching her throughout the trip as she looked at you when she thought you weren’t aware, and you felt her gaze hot and heavy on your skin. You thought of all the times she had disapproved of your lovers, how overprotective she was whenever you attracted male attention, the way she flinched and blushed when a waiter asked if you were a couple. And you realised you began to feel something you hadn’t even let yourself consider.  _ Hope _ .

And all of a sudden she’s back from Virginia, she’s opposite you at the table and you didn’t know you could experience joy like this. Her mother is telling a joke and you’re laughing and you feel as though you could float, because there’s nowhere you’d rather be and nothing else you’d rather be doing than surrounding yourself with her family, with her staring at you. You can feel her eyes on your face, and you can’t help but turn to face her and as you do, you know you’re right. You know she feels the same way. You can see it in the way she isn’t blinking, as though she’s in a trance, as though there’s nothing she would rather be looking at than you. And you’ve dreamt of this for years, the way your heart is beating faster but you feel lighter somehow, as though you could fly away. 

You allow yourself an extra glass of wine tonight. You know Jane will notice, because you notice everything about each other, but this evening feels like a celebration. Perhaps it’s premature, perhaps you’re looking into something that isn’t there, but you’re sharing a look now and you can  _ feel _ it. You’ve always shared a secret language that nobody else seemed privy to, and tonight there’s an electricity charging the air and it’s almost visible, almost tangible. For a moment you see panic flash across her face and she gets up from the table, rushes to the bathroom, and you want to run after her, want to tell her it’s okay, you feel it too, but Frankie is talking to you and Nina is smiling at you and the wine makes your legs feel slightly numb. So you try to comfort her when she rejoins the party; you can’t help but reach for her arm because she’s flushed and she looks so  _ scared _ and you never wanted to be the source of her fear.

And when the party is over and she’s sitting by you on the couch you’ve shared so many times before it feels like the first time because she’s looking at you expectantly and she’s asking you to tell her what’s happening and you wish you could take all of her apprehension, all of her pain, all of her doubt, because you never want her to feel afraid of this. And you know what you’re going to do, you know it when you can’t stop staring at her lips. You try to encourage her to make the first move because you know she’s teetering on that razor-sharp edge, but you can’t possibly wait a second longer; you know the moment would be lost forever. And so you kiss her, and it’s everything you dreamt of and more, except it doesn’t feel like a revelation, it doesn’t feel surreal, it feels exactly like how it should be, as though you had been kissing her for years.

When you break apart the second time you try and find the words, you try to find anything sufficient, but she’s saying your name, whispering it as in prayer and you think it’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. Her hands are on your face and you can feel the red hot heat of her breath on your mouth and you can’t help it, the tears flow silently, and the taste of salt, and the taste of  _ her  _ makes you dizzy. You don’t want to stop, you think you could live happily forever in this moment of the first kiss, but now her brown eyes are swelling with tears and you finally rediscover you have a voice.

“I love you,” you say, and it seems silly, almost redundant, but she seems to need to hear it as you see her visibly relax.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cries, and your heart, despite it all, breaks a little.

“I didn’t think I could,” you manage to say, wiping away your own tears.

“Maura, you can tell me anything. You know that.”

“Not this. I couldn’t bear to lose you,” you almost croak, your voice getting stuck in your throat. You didn’t think you’d get to this part. You never planned a speech.

“You would never lose me,” she says, and she reaches for your hand.  _ I almost did,  _ you want to say but you keep it to yourself.

“I didn’t think you would, you  _ could,  _ feel the same way,” you say instead, rubbing her hand on top of yours.

“But if you’d told me…If you had just told me,” she says, her voice slightly frenzied, and she gets up and starts pacing back and forth. 

“I’m telling you now,” you say quietly, looking up at her. She stops in her tracks. 

“But do you know how stupid I’ve been, Maura? How could I not see it?” 

“I didn’t at first,” you say, trying to reassure her, “it was only a few years ago.”

“A few years ago?!” 

“Jane,” you start but instead of saying anything more you reach out your hand and you pull her back down to the couch. You cradle her cheek and plant a kiss there, causing her to gasp slightly. 

“What does it mean, Maura? About me…about us,” she asks, and her voice is smaller than you’ve ever heard it. You know the implication, you know what she’s getting at, and it’s one question you can’t answer for her. 

“Whatever you want it to mean,” you whisper into her skin. She leans her head against yours, as though you ground her, as though if she can get close enough, you’ll give her all she needs. You hope you can. You hope touch is enough. 

So you kiss her again. You taste her tears and you taste yours and you’re not sure whose is whose and you think you like it better that way. 

“I…I love you. I love you too,” she says in between kisses, and your heart almost lifts off. 

“We’ll work it out together,” you say and you kiss her cheek, her jaw, her neck. You can feel her melt into your hands and you know you will, you know she’s here now, here forever, and you’re kissing her and you’re touching her and she’s kissing you back, she’s touching you back. And it’s enough, it will always be enough, and even after all these years, the wait feels like no time at all. 


End file.
